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Some conservative friends of mine find it amusing that liberals are now supposedly in love with the idea of electing Oprah Winfrey as president.  “Those silly liberals were once so principled in their opposition to electing a TV personality billionaire president, now they fawn over Oprah.  Haha!”

Aside from the fact that every liberal I know sees Winfrey as a poor candidate, I think the primary point to consider is that the Republican party nominating and ultimately electing Trump – a known conman and corrupt personality – to the presidency has lowered the bar so much that a dangerous peddler of pseudoscience and woo is talked about as a reasonable choice for the office of president.

Don’t get me wrong, Trump is so bad in my estimation, his corruption so deep, his complete lack in ethical norms so wide that, if the Democratic and Republican nominees end up being Winfrey and Trump, I’m voting Winfrey.  She wouldn’t be in my top 1000.  But Trump is such a raging imbecile, narcissist extraordinaire, TV-watching simpleton who thinks he’s insightful, that stopping his reelection would benefit humanity, even if doing so means having Oprah Winfrey as his replacement.

Trump is a fraud who inherited hundreds of millions of dollars from his daddy, continued making money under the name and in the business his daddy built. There’s nothing wrong with this per se, but what is wrong is the way Donald Trump and his sycophants act as if he’s some sort of self-made genius. His family sent him to all the right prep schools, etc. Making and losing huge sums of money in the life Trump was born into is anything but surprising, even knowing how he is the greatest living embodiment of Dunning-Kruger.

Nearly everything Mitt Romney said about Trump in early 2016 at the Hinckley Institute was completely true, and then some. There was never any illusion about the intellectual, ethical, and moral failings of Donald Trump. So-called conservatives still supporting him because of partisanship and tribalism need to wake up the dangers of having this sort of grifter in the White House.

So, yes. I also find it interesting and somewhat worrying Oprah Winfrey is currently being mentioned as the potential nominee for the Democratic party. Even though Winfrey is nowhere on my radar searching for good candidates, I’d vote for her every time in any contest that came down to her or Trump.

I say this knowing how much real-world damage talk shows like Oprah Winfrey’s inflicted upon society. The most obvious example is the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 90s. While the public and authorities were whipped into a frenzy by fraudulent books and daytime talk shows, hundreds of people were arrested for imagined crimes such as “Satanic ritual abuse.”

Dozens of innocent people were incarcerated for hundreds of years collectively before finally being released. Most were daycare providers accused of Satanic ritual abuse. In nearly all cases, the only “evidence” provided was testimony extracted from children using the pseudoscience of recovered-memory therapy, where a gullible or disingenuous therapist would lead the children to the claims they wanted to be validated.

There was never a shred of physical evidence, which, if even a fraction of the abuse and murder claimed by the children turned out to be true, there certainly would have been. Luckily, we came to our senses, had a full review of the evidence, and eventually released most of those we, as a country, falsely imprisoned.

So, even though Oprah Winfrey represents, among many others, some of the worst tendencies we have, she’s still infinitely better than Trump.

Noam Chomsky (1977)

Any scholarly examination of propaganda must look beyond automatic emotional reactions and delve into its broader implications and more varied effects.  While it has been used to promote much evil, one line of argument goes, it is surely capable of good, and therefore neutral.  This is undoubtedly what Lasswell had in mind.  He wanted to approach the subject from that direction in order to better understand it and hopefully limit its negative effects.  But might there be unexamined consequences in taking an analytically value-neutral stance to propaganda studies?  For example, propaganda can be used for good or bad, but these are obviously relative value concepts.  One group’s good is another’s evil.  So ultimately does this really tell us anything?  Almost any use of propaganda would surely be rationalized by the propagandists as the right thing, as proper and good.  Linguist and media critic Noam Chomsky makes precisely this point (1989): “It is probable that the most inhuman monsters, even the Himmlers and the Mengeles, convince themselves that they are engaged in noble and courageous acts” (19).  So simply saying propaganda is neutral and we only need to use it for good fails here because much of what constitutes the “good” is contingent upon any number of factors – preconceptions and ideology, social class, education, political and economic power – that must be examined in order to understand propaganda as a social force actualized in the real world.  Propaganda is embedded with value and largely becomes, due to unequal social relations which exist, a tool for the powerful, who are the principle operators and owners of the channels of mass communications, if not the primary influencers of them.  The value-neutral approach overlooks this social (mal)distribution of power and, in doing so, helps to reinforce and reproduce this reality of inequality.

Jacques Ellul (1990)

So what exactly do we mean by propaganda?  Of the countless social scientists, psychologists, philosophers, communications scholars, and many others who study propaganda, one thing is certain: among them, there is no clearly agreed upon definition of the term.  By one author’s count, more than one hundred distinct definitions exist in the relevant literature (Cunningham, 2002: 60).  Yet, despite the differing opinions on the exactness of what it is, there are clear features which emerge.  Randal Marlin (2002) finds that what is common is that propaganda is seen as “an organized and deliberate attempt to influence many people, directly or indirectly” (22, emphasis added).  But, while locating analogous definitional characteristics among the diverse literature, such a description alone is insufficient in distinguishing it from other forms of communication.  So, some scholars go even further, stressing manipulation as well as intentionality.  Lasswell (1927) succinctly calls propaganda “the management of collective attitudes by the manipulation of significant symbols” (627).  Likewise, the great propaganda theorist Jacques Ellul (1973 [1965]) more specifically defines it as “a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulations and incorporated in an organization” (61).  Stressing these properties – purposive manipulation in an organized manner, the mobilization of mass groups, and a utilitarian-based method –
helps to distinguish propaganda from common forms of education and communication, and enlightens our discussion of whether it is best analyzed as a neutral concept.

While we can divide approaches to propaganda into three general categories – negative, neutral, and favorable (Marlin, 2002: 15-23) – the value-neutral approach today is widely accepted and “amounts to orthodoxy” (Cunningham, 2002: 129).  This dominant interpretation, as noted above, is strongly driven by the idea that propaganda can be used for good or bad and is, therefore, contingent upon the context of its use.  Lasswell’s propaganda-as-pump-handle statement represents this line of thought and was one of the earliest statements framing it as thus, encouraging a scholarly analysis of the subject “in a clear-headed, stick-to-the-facts way” (Brown, 2006).  Stanley Cunningham traces the roots of the value-neutral perspective to a moral detachment in approaches to research and analysis:

The neutralist thesis tends to emerge when propaganda, conceived as either psychological effects or, even more impersonally, as detached messages, is routinely distanced from the epistemic and ethical center-points of human communicative action. When propaganda is thus detached from its real center of gravity – the human act in all its epistemic, intentional and moral complexity – it can much more easily be treated as ethically indifferent, as a one-dimensional effect or artifact. (2002: 152)

By looking only at the utility of propaganda – its effectiveness, technical aspects, the messages sent – the researcher, in seeming to take a scientifically objective approach, creates a moral vacuum that can result in unseen consequences.  But is it so easy to detach ethical concerns from the technical application of propaganda, and what, if any, are the dangers in doing so?

Around the same time Lasswell was arguing that propaganda was best studied as a neutral principle or process (1928; 1934), a scholarly shift was also occurring in the field of propaganda analysis.  Critical studies of propaganda in the 1930s gave way in the following decades to effects-based analyses which were heavily influenced by corporate and government desires to manage public opinion (Cunningham, 2002: 182).  Such a move encouraged a more utilitarian approach to the subject, focusing on its properties as a technique and tool for achieving ends and paying less attention to its possible negative features.  Ellul addresses the growing instrumental nature of modern propaganda as follows: “More and more, the propagandist is a technician using a keyboard of material media and psychological techniques” (1973 [1965]: 197).  This is what results from the technocratic tendency to “rationalize” the knowledge of social science and psychology to potentially be used for any desired ends because ethical considerations are not part of the calculus.  Approaching propaganda as a neutral process dissociated from ethics opens the door for a “disinterested” (mis)use.

Robert K. Merton

Robert K. Merton is correct in warning against social scientists, whose research and interests include the study and understanding of public opinion and mass persuasion, from taking “a detached and dispassionate” stance with regards to that study (1945: 271).  Such a position serves to take away an important degree of responsibility for how one’s findings are used.  In short, it is impossible to separate means used from possible ends achieved, which by doing so might very well contribute to the immoral use of propaganda.  “The investigator may naïvely suppose that he [sic] is engaged in the value-free activity of research, whereas in fact he may simply have so defined his research problems that the results will be of use to one group in the society, and not to others.  His very choice and definition of a problem reflect his tacit values” (Merton, 1945: 271).  Merton’s warning brings up a crucial issue.  It forces us to look at the social context in which propaganda actually takes place, to look at society’s institutional structure, as well as the embedded values of the researchers and propagandists, and to consider how these elements shape propaganda and its study.  Such an insight raises important questions: Who defines the terms of propaganda when it is used?  Is propaganda socially neutral in that all groups and persons have equal access to its powers and benefits?  Are there built-in assumptions in propaganda analysis?  And more broadly, what are the consequences for democracy?

Jürgen Habermas

Some theorists from the early part of the 20th century began to perceive propaganda as a necessary component of the modern, liberal democratic state (see Lippmann, 1965 [1922]; Lasswell, 1928: 261; Bernays, 1928, 1947).  Yet this idea lies in a specific conception of democracy, a conception reflecting certain values and norms – not to mention class interests.  In expanding upon democratic theory, German philosopher Jürgen Habermas developed the idea of the public sphere, which he defines as “a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed.  Access is guaranteed to all citizens” (1974 [1964]: 49). This normative notion proposes an open and dialogical mode of social discourse and rests on a general assumption that individuals, through open channels of communication and free access to information through media, will act in a rational way in developing public opinion, eventually arriving at a common good.  Propaganda, in contrast, is largely one-way, manipulative and non-voluntary.  Habermas’ is a conception of democracy that is incompatible with a “democratic” system that relies on propaganda to mobilize public opinion, and as such provides an important alternative to the propagandist’s democratic vision, a vision that harbors negative stereotypes about common people and is in full accord with elite values and interests.

In presenting his theory of democracy, Lasswell (1928) argues that “[p]ropaganda, if vigorously used on all sides, makes for the maintenance of public interest in political affairs” (263, emphasis added).  Similarly, Edward Bernays, a principle founder of the public relations industry, believes that in contemporary democracies “the privilege of attempting to sway public opinion is everyone’s.  It is one of the manifestations of democracy that anyone may try to convince others and to assume leadership on behalf of his own thesis” (1928: 959).  While theoretically true in concept, such positions assume the existence of a diversity of opinions, each of relatively equal status and ability for communicating to the public.  But is this truly the case in modern mass society?  Is there no essential difference between the efforts of a small, relatively powerless group with a certain message and its attempts to get that message out, heard and entered into the social discourse, and the efforts, say, of a public relations firm working for wealthy corporate interests, or the activities of a powerful government in influencing opinion?  While in the abstract propaganda, as a process, as a means to achieve an end, is arguably value-neutral, the social reality within which it is practiced is anything but a neutral space where any single group’s propaganda has as much a chance to persuade as the next.  Ellul makes this very point when he writes:

[T]he freedom of expression of one who makes a speech to a limited audience is not the same as that of the speaker who has all the radio sets in the country at his disposal, all the more as the science of propaganda gives to these instruments a shock effect that the non-initiated cannot equal. (1973 [1965]: 237)

It is easy to see how, in such a reality of unequal social power, propaganda – while not solely possessed by the powerful – is inclined to be a tool for those people and groups that wield such power, and as such “tends to be far more top-down than it is bottom-up” (Kimble, 2005: 203).

Perhaps the most prominent proponent of the elite use of propaganda was Edward Bernays.  Bernays (1947) openly called for using modern mass communications and scientifically mastered persuasive techniques to organize society in accord with powerful interests, in what he called “the engineering of consent” (114).  He saw mass communications “as a potent force for social good or possible evil” and felt that leadership, “with the aid of technicians,” should work towards furthering their version of the social good (1947: 113, 114).  While Bernays perceived this consent engineering to be “the very essence of the democratic process,” he saw that, due mostly to lack of education, the general public had to be directed towards “socially constructive goals and values” deemed important by the leadership (114).  Inherent in this is the belief that the complexities of modern society are too much for the average person to evaluate and make rational decisions about.  Therefore only a select, highly-educated leadership is able to make such determinations and further the overall social interest and well-being.  But as Leonard Doob points out, “If wisdom concerning facts and values cannot be expected from the masses, it does not follow that only experts have a monopoly on the kind of wisdom required to resolve the great problems of an age” (1948: 206).

Walter Lippmann (1914)

American journalist and social philosopher Walter Lippmann (1965 [1922]) also reflects the elitist conception when he writes, “[T]he common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality” (195).  Lippmann names this as one of the principle reasons for using propaganda as a means of shaping public opinion.  Likewise, according to Lasswell (1934), “[t]he modern propagandist . . . recognizes that men [sic] are often poor judges of their own interests, flitting from one alternative to the next without solid reason or clinging timorously to the fragments of some mossy rock of ages” (24).  Even certain later theorists of propaganda voice similarly elitist ideas.  Terence Qualter (1985) argues that the task of modern government “is so highly technical in nature” that its operation should be kept out of the hands of “inexpert public opinion” (127).  Despite the scientifically neutral sound of such ideas and the confidence with which they are uttered, one can clearly see they are formulated using value judgments, and as such bring into question the very utility of evaluating propaganda as value neutral.  It is their belief the public – due to its own ignorance – needs to be manipulated into accepting the ideologically- and value-laden assumptions of what an elite minority deems to be for the overall social good.  But one cannot assume that what elite sectors of society determine to be the common good will actually be so for other parts of society.  Moreover, a wealthy minority could very well take advantage of its social power and greater command of the communications process to use propaganda to promote policies harmful to the general population yet beneficial to themselves: lower taxes on the wealthy while cutting social programs for the poor, deregulation of business enterprises while jobs are moved overseas, etc.

These theorists want to strip propaganda of ethical considerations, to make it a sterile object of research, which in turn contributes to it being used as a rationalistic, technocratic tool mastered and used by elite, educated managers of society, the people best able to handle the “highly technical” task of government (Qualter, 1985: 127).  But unstated in these assumptions is the fact that any such efforts require the value judgments of the propagandists and necessitate a specific concept of what is best for society, which, as noted above, will rarely diverge from what is best for powerful interests backing the propagandists.  Therefore, propaganda is a tool for spreading and enforcing value in the sense that any social order which it is the job of propaganda to promote, or the ideas of which it is to enforce, are reflections of particular beliefs and social relations.  Propaganda, as actualized in reality and not as an abstract process, will always come embedded with values and ideological assumptions.

Accepting the value-neutral thesis of propaganda allows the analyst to avoid looking at how social power is intrinsically tied to propaganda.  It encourages an abstraction – propaganda as a concept considered without the complexities of social hierarchies and classes – that does not exist in reality.  This, in turn, permits its uncritical incorporation into the prevailing social system as a tool for promoting institutional power.  Propaganda absent social relations is an impossibility in mass society, where public opinions “are actively realized within the prevailing institutions of power” (Mills, 1956: 75).  And it is through such power that contemporary elites control the principle channels of modern communications: the mass media, which are likewise the primary sources of publicly available information and, as such, essential tools of the propagandist.  Within a class society, a society where power is unequally distributed as in the global capitalist system, automatic structural constraints exist which cannot be ignored.  Propaganda, as realized, will never be neutral in actuality because power can dictate the truth, what is considered correct, the very structure of propaganda.

The intent of this essay was not to portray propaganda as all-powerful and evil, a monopolized tool of the elite used to control, in an absolute sense, the public mind.  No, what was intended was an attempt to demonstrate the difficulty, and danger, of separating such “tools” from any ethical center, and more importantly, from the social, material reality within which the tools of propaganda are used, a reality in which existing power relations are justified as right and good.  As shown, many of the theorists who see propaganda as neutral clearly internalize certain values and justify propaganda as a means of enforcing such values.  Alternatives are rarely if ever addressed.  Undoubtedly propaganda can be used for peaceful purposes and for promoting the overall common good.  But is it a necessary condition for achieving such goals?  Might other options be available?  The public sphere as proposed by Habermas points to a possible alternative.  It offers a substitute to the largely one-way, manipulative flow of information as represented by propaganda.  It is a vision of a participatory democracy, not a managed one.  Therefore, we can envision peace through such a mechanism without needing to resort to propaganda, but can we say the same for war?  At least where advanced industrialized societies are concerned, war and propaganda go hand-in-hand.  From prior to World War I to the current Global War on Terrorism, propaganda has been seen as an essential component of military operations.  Propaganda, even when approached as a neutral concept, will always reflect social relations when applied.

Propagandists and propaganda scholars, despite their best intentions, harbor certain values which will inform their approach to the subject and affect their conclusions.  This is unavoidable and we need not lose sight of the fact.  So in this, propaganda is infused with value.  It will most certainly, in actuality, be a purveyor of values.  And it is best seen as being so because a critical analytical approach allows a deeper, more sustained understanding of the current social system and how mass media and communications technologies reflect often unconsidered disparities of power.  The neutrality thesis ignores this and subsequently opens the door for abuse.

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References

Bernays, Edward (1947): The Engineering of Consent.  Annals of the American Academy of Political Social Science, 250, March, 113-120.

Bernays, Edward (1928): Manipulating Public Opinion: The Why and The How.  The American Journal of Sociology, 33:6, 958-971.

Brown, John (2006): Two Ways of Looking at Propaganda.  [On-line]  <http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=pmt&requesttimeout=500&folder=715&paper=2687&gt; (Accessed 9 Nov. 2006).

Chomsky, Noam (1989): Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies.   Boston: South End Press.

Cunningham, Stanley B. (2002): The Idea of Propaganda: A Reconstruction.  London: Praeger.

Doob, Leonard William (1948): Public Opinion and Propaganda.  New York: Henry Holt and Company.

Ellul, Jacques ([1965] 1973): Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes.  Translated by Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner.  New York: Vintage.

Habermas, Jürgen (1974 [1964]): The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article.  New German Critique, No. 3 (Autumn, 1974), 49-55.  Translated by Sara Lennox and Frank Lennox.

Kimble, James J. (2005): Whither Propaganda? Agonism and ‘‘The Engineering of Consent’’.   Quarterly Journal of Speech, 91:2, 201-218.

Lasswell, Harold D. (1928): The Function of the Propagandist. International Journal of Ethics, 38:3, 258-278.

Lasswell, Harold D. (1934): Propaganda.  In Propaganda, edited by Robert Jackall.  London: Macmillan Press, 1995.

Lasswell, Harold D. (1927): The Theory of Political Propaganda.  The American Political Science Review, 21:3, 627-631.

Lippmann, Walter (1965 [1922]): Public Opinion.  New York : Free Press ; London : Collier Macmillan.

Marlin, Randal. (2002): Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion.  Peterborough: Broadview Press.

Merton, Robert K. (1945): Mass Persuasion: A Technical Problem and a Moral Dilemma.  In Propaganda, edited by Robert Jackall.  London: Macmillan Press, 1995.

Mills, C. Wright. (1956): The Mass Society.  In Propaganda, edited by Robert Jackall.  London: Macmillan Press, 1995.

Qualter, Terence H. (1985): Opinion Control in the Democracies.  London: Macmillan.

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Videos

Pilgrims Going to Mecca, Léon Belly (1827–1877)

One could make the case that the impulse in many to explore and seek out new experiences is a built-in characteristic of the human species, a product of evolution shared at some frequency throughout all populations of people.  What better explanation accounts for the widespread dispersal of humanity throughout the globe and in almost every type of landscape imaginable?  From the jutting peaks of the Himalayas to the arid lands of North Africa, people are found in almost any environment.  Perhaps, in order for life to thrive as it has, a Diaspora of sorts is a necessary condition that contributes to diversity, which, in turn, increases the chances of the overall survival of a species?

We’ll likely never fully answer such questions, but what we can say is that at least some individuals seem born explorers.  Travelers of every type and cultural background have contributed to the pages of history, mapping the previously unmapped, learning the formerly unknown, and entering into the forbidden.  It is the latter – of exploration into the forbidden – that will be the focus of this essay, and, in particular, the infiltration of Europeans into the sacred territories of Islam along the western portion of the Arabian Peninsula known as the Hijaz.  In the following examination, I will relate the stories of three Englishmen, each from different historical eras, who made the annual pilgrimage, forbidden to all non-Muslims, and entered the city of Mecca in the heart of the Hijaz.  This pilgrimage is known in Arabic as the Hajj, and the travels of the men, separated by two hundred and fifty years, reflect an evolving and interconnecting relationship taking place between England and Arabia in particular, and Europe and its developing notions of the Orient in general.

According to Islamic tradition, the Hajj is an obligation for all Muslims to make at some point during their lifetime.  The only exceptions allowed are to those unable to accomplish the journey due to physical or economic impediment, as well as individuals hampered by political realities that would make the trip too dangerous for the would-be traveler.¹  Although scholars disagree as to the exact nature of the relationship, almost all concur the Hajj has pre-Islamic origins.  Some recent studies point to an association between Abraham – of the Judeo-Christian traditions – and Mecca going back to well before the claimed revelations of the Prophet Muhammad.²  Francis Peters, in his book The Hajj, deals with this idea when he writes, “There are traditions that others in the city [of Mecca] had connections with Abraham, connections that centered, as Muhammad’s own did, on the Meccan Ka’ba, the House that Abraham build.”³  Al-Ka’ba, or the Cube, is a simple shrine made of stone residing in the center of the Great Mosque in Mecca.  It is the focal point of the Hajj and of the entire Islamic spiritual tradition.  According to custom, God ordered Abraham and his son Ishmael to build the sanctuary as a place of worship in affirmation of the primacy of one God over all others.  This god is known in Arabic as Allah and can be considered, because of the connection with the two traditions, the same god as that of the Torah and the Christian Old and New Testaments.⁴  Islamic tradition, as pronounced in the Quran, ascribes the source of the Hajj with Abraham as well, claiming Allah ordered him to call all believers to pilgrimage.⁵  Those who complete the annual journey are known as hajjis, a title each of the following three individuals were able to acquire, despite the unlikelihood.  The first of the hajjis whose story I will chronicle is Joseph Pitts, an ordinary man who gets caught in extraordinary circumstances and lives to tell the tale.

In 1678 Joseph Pitts, from the town of Exon in western England, became a sailor and joined the trading vessel Speedwell.  He was fifteen years old.⁶  His departure that same year marked the beginning of a fifteen year ordeal in which he would be captured by pirates and sold into slavery in Algeria, forcibly converted to Islam, and become the first Englishman to make the pilgrimage to Mecca and write about it.⁷  Michael Wolfe describes Pitts’ book, recounting the adventure as “one of English literature’s more curious travelogues on the one hand, an exotic yarn of capture and escape on the Barbary Coast, on the other, an earnest Christian’s effort to disavow his conversion to Islam.”⁸  Upon reading the travelogue, one will surely notice Pitts as being a deeply religious man with sincere Christian beliefs.  But this, even with the fact of his ill treatment at the hands of a few Muslims while held in slavery in Algiers, does not make him completely prejudiced against the religion of Islam.  He attempts to maintain an honest posture throughout, and, in fact, Pitts makes a great effort to present an accurate picture of Islam, of which he undoubtedly developed a considerable and intimate view during his time in Algiers and his pilgrimage to Mecca.  

Pitts’ route in the Hijaz.  From Freeth and Winstone, Explorers of Arabia, 42.

The demand for greater accuracy and factual information about the world was growing in Europe during Pitts’ time.  This no doubt aided the contemporaneous drive in Europe for nationalistic, economic imperial domination and expansion, an era when a detailed picture of the world furthered the quest for and increased the competition over exploitable lands, resources, and people and fed the seemingly insatiable appetite of empire building.⁹  Travelogues and various treatises about the Orient flourished during this time.  These new, more genuine portrayals of unknown or little-known lands did contribute to overcoming certain long-held stereotypes predominant in Europe at the time, only to rebuild new and often more insidious ones based on control, manipulation, and assumptions of Western superiority.  While Pitts is by no means a British agent in the service of the Empire, his book, A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohammetans, is a product of the times it was written.  And its frank style demonstrates a growing quest for knowledge in Europe about the previously unknowable lands that lie to the east.

Joseph Pitts’ participation in the Hajj and his journey into the sacred lands of Arabia maintain this dualistic nature of accurate reporting coupled with an entirely 17th century, Christian critique of the people and customs witnessed.  He begins his description of the event with an explanation of the four Hajj caravans that enter Mecca yearly followed by a detailed summary of the housing accommodations in the holy city.¹⁰  The young pilgrim is particularly moved by the devotion displayed among his Muslim counterparts during the initial ceremonies upon entering the Great Mosque.  He writes:

I could not choose but admire to see those poor creatures so extraordinary devout and affectionate when they were about these superstitions, and with what awe and trembling they were possessed.  Insomuch, that I could scarce forbear shedding of tears to see their zeal, though blind and idolatrous.¹¹  

A certain level of respect is obvious in this confession, yet Pitts is quick to mention his overall disapproval, seeing much of the attention paid to the Ka’ba – the focus of their enthusiasm – as being akin to idol worship rather than a symbolic affirmation of the pilgrim’s association with Allah.

The author’s description of Mecca and its adjoining countryside is a tremendously precise one that includes explanations of many of the holy sites surrounding Muhammad’s life, like the cave where the prophet supposedly received his first messages from the angel Gabriel.  Pitts reports his findings of this place in a mostly detached if not somewhat praiseworthy way, stating that what he saw in the cave “is not at all beautified,” adding that this characteristic of genuineness is what he admires about the place.¹²  The author is also quick to prove Muslim superstitions wrong whenever given the chance, as while writing about the “Pigeons of the Prophet” – a title Pitts gives to the numerous birds living in Mecca – Pitts says, “I have heard some say, that in their flight they’ll never fly over the Bayt Allah,¹³ as if they knew it to be the House of God.  But it is a very great mistake, for I have seen them to fly oftentimes over the Bayt Allah.”¹⁴  He is also quick to dispel the belief that, while inside the House of God, one will be “smitten blind for gazing about,” which, of course, Pitts was none too hesitant to do, stating, “I found nothing worth seeing in it, only two wooden pillars in the midst to keep up the roof, and a bar of iron fastened to them, on which hanged three or four silver lamps.”¹⁵  Near the conclusion of his account of the Hajj, Pitts gives a heartfelt confession of feelings he shared with the pilgrims while at Arafat¹⁶ when he states the following:

It was a sight indeed able to pierce one’s heart to behold so many thousands in their garments of humility and mortification, with their naked heads, and cheeks watered with tears, and to hear their grievous sighs and sobs, they begging earnestly for the remission of their sins, and promising newness of life, using a form of penitential expressions, and thus continuing for the space of four or five hours.¹⁷

This is quite possibly his most straightforward request for redemption from God for his own membership, forced though it may be, in what he sees as an untrue and idolatrous faith.  One can almost make out Pitts participating fully with the other hajjis, sharing in their tears with his “pierced” heart rather than remaining the detached observer he at times makes himself out to be in his Account.  To a Christian with as deeply held beliefs as Pitts, this type of participation would be a sin indeed, and it is almost as though he is trying to explain his emotions at the time and why he took part to an extent beyond that of a forced spectator.  In short, Pitts is attempting to explain to God why he became an honest participant – for who other than God and Pitts would know the Christian hajji’s emotional state that day at Arafat?

Joseph Pitts finished the Hajj shortly thereafter.  But it would be some ten years before he would return to England a free man and begin to recount his amazing story, of which the pilgrimage to Mecca is but a small part.  His narrative provides a perfect example of a normal person forced into remarkable circumstances, ultimately prevailing in the end against great odds.  Pitts unintentionally added to the changing European discourse occurring at that time concerning Arabia in particular and the Near East in general. This relationship was shifting to a new stage, one of European dominance in which things would never be the same again.  Our next explorer is the quintessential representative of this new European preeminence and its quest to rule in every possible way all the corners of the globe.  Unlike Pitts, this hajji was anything but an ordinary individual.  He was, rather, a man of exceptional stature and ability, often personally overshadowing the events of the Hajj detailed in his massive account of the sacred Islamic event.

Burton in 1864.

In their book Explorers of Arabia, Zahra Freeth and Victor Winstone describe the 19th century English explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton as “strong, physically imposing, capable of commanding any language or dialect with apparent ease, a master of disguise and dissimulation, he could play almost any part with conviction.  Translator, linguist, ethnologist, anthropologist, geographer, philosopher, writer; he achieved a mastery of almost any subject he set his mind to.”¹⁸  By all accounts, this is no exaggeration, and the intellectual breadth and scope of his multi-volume tome of the Hajj, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah, is a testament to his capacities in all these areas.  Burton set off on his pilgrimage into the Hijaz in 1853; he was thirty-two years old.  At the time, he was a lieutenant in the Indian Army and in many ways represented the changing circumstances of British “interests,” especially when compared to the Britain of Joseph Pitts some one hundred and seventy years prior.  The Empire was paramount when it came to foreign affairs, and this impressive explorer did little but strengthen its cause.  “We must recognize,” Edward Said writes in his highly influential work on the subject of European cultural imperialism while commenting on Burton’s Personal Narrative, “How the voice of the highly idiosyncratic master of Oriental knowledge informs, feeds into the voice of European ambition for rule over the Orient.”¹⁹  The voice Professor Said speaks of, of course, is that of Richard Burton.

Burton’s Hajj route.  From Freeth and Winstone, Explorers of Arabia, 122.

During this time of imperial expansion, growing numbers of Muslims were coming under European control and authority.  Europe had begun to play an unprecedented role in the annual Islamic pilgrimage, issuing necessary travel documents as well as providing much of the seagoing transportation.²⁰  The Hajj Burton participated in was one finding a fast-encroaching Europe creeping into the inner, spiritual refuge of Islam.  Unlike Joseph Pitts, Burton was not a Muslim convert, opting instead to pose as “a wandering Darwaysh,” or Muslim doctor, of Afghani descent from India.²¹  Although officially in the service of the British Crown, he had a personal reason for making the journey as well.  Burton explains his somewhat romantic drive when he says of his mindset at the time:

Thoroughly tired of ‘progress’ and of ‘civilization’; curious to see with my eyes what others are content to ‘hear with ears,’ namely, Moslem inner life in a really Mohammedan country; and longing … to set foot on that mysterious spot which no vacation tourist has yet described.²²  

This statement clearly suggests a motivating force greater than duty alone, yet were it not for the even greater interests of his mother country these dreams might never have been realized, for Great Britain provided the resources, leave from military service, and, ultimately, its final stamp of approval.

Burton set out from his home country on April 3, 1853, having already assumed his new identity.²³  The hajji-imposter had no difficulty blending in with his fellow pilgrims during the journey, which took him from Alexandria, up the Nile to Cairo, on to Suez, and from there to Yanbu, north of Jeddah in the Hijaz.  Each leg and stop demands at least a chapter in his linear narrative, which overflows with footnotes, detailed drawings by the author, historical information, and anthropological insights with an often-racial slant common for the time.  From Yanbu, the hajjis traveled east to Medina to visit the prophet Muhammed’s tomb.  Burton’s description of the tomb, the Mosque housing it, the people of Medina, and the entire layout of the city is in many ways the quintessential word in 19th-century, Western literature on this, the second holiest site in Islam.²⁴  This in-depth treatise of Medina spans well over two hundred and seventy pages of his Memorial Edition and contains more than twenty visual depictions, from simple diagrams to intricate maps that have every possible detail included.

From Personal Narrative, Burton (1857).

Along with his Muslim traveling companions met along the way, Burton left Medina on the Damascus Caravan on 30 August 1853.  Although their original plan was “to stay at Al-Madinah till the last moment” and “accompany the Kafilat al-Tayyarah, or the ‘Flying Caravan’,” those plans were dashed when the Flying Caravan was canceled.²⁵  Rather than upsetting the adventurer, the change excited Burton because the new route was one “no European had as yet travelled down.”²⁶  The Damascus Caravan passed south out of Mecca through the Najd Desert, into the heart of Bedouin country, “where,” the author warns, “robberies are frequent and stabbings occasional.”²⁷  Situated in his narrative during the caravan’s journey through the Najd, Burton includes an entire chapter titled “The Badawin²⁸ of Al-Hijaz.”²⁹  Like the rest of his Personal Narrative, this chapter is weighted with lengthy footnotes, and here the author paints a highly racialized and inaccurate picture of the Bedouin people.  Commenting on Burton’s scientific authority on this subject, Freeth and Winstone write, “The footnotes to his anthropological observations become wildly conjectural, the anatomical detail as expert-sounding as it is often wide of the mark.”³⁰

The caravan arrived in Mecca on 11 September 1853.  The next day Burton entered the Great Mosque and sighted the Bayt Allah, and in displaying his literary prowess he writes:

There at last it lay, the bourn of my long and weary Pilgrimage, realising the plans and hopes of many and many a year. . . .  There were no giant fragments of hoar antiquity as in Egypt, no remains of graceful and harmonious beauty as in Greece and Italy, no barbarous gorgeousness as in the buildings of India; yet the view was strange, unique – and how few [sic] have looked upon the celebrated shrine!³¹  

How few indeed – other than the many millions of Muslims before him?  As with Pitts, the sight of the Ka’ba moves Burton in a powerful way, but, by his own admission, this is not “the high feeling of religious enthusiasm,” but instead “the ecstasy of gratified pride.”³²  Here is a man stirred by the personal satisfaction of achieving a task few of his European counterparts would ever get to experience, this is the climax of his journey, the inner reason for his going on the Hajj.  Yet Burton still notes all he sees in great detail: from the ceremonies surrounding the holy Water of Mecca, known as Zemzem;³³ to the Tawaf, or circumambulation;³⁴ to the black stone situated in the corner of the Ka’ba.³⁵  Nothing escapes his keen examination.  The remainder of the author’s account in Personal Narrative is much the same as his detailed elucidations about Medina and the desert Bedouin, replete with diagrams, artistic renderings and sketches, and of course countless footnotes.

From Personal Narrative, Burton (1857).

Burton had achieved his goal, joining that short list of non-Muslims to have made the Pilgrimage to Mecca and taken part in the Hajj.  He concluded his journey upon boarding the ship Dwarka sailing out of Jeddah on 26 September 1853.³⁶  Throughout the account the author maintains a dual nature: at once English and Oriental, a poet and a warrior, imposter and insider.  Additionally, his impact on the Western discourse regarding the Orient reflects a dualism of sorts.  On the positive side, Burton’s Personal Narrative, as author Michael Wolfe points out, did contribute to a much more accurate picture of the Hijaz to the Western reader, especially his insights associated with Medina, which was a mostly unknown place at that time in Christian Europe.³⁷  Furthermore, this book closed the chapter on the explanation of the Hajj for curious European audiences in many ways.  For who could add to this meticulous and learned narrative, where seemingly every last detail was explained to a degree beyond which seemed humanly possible?  The level of authority expressed by the author is present throughout these volumes, whether in endless footnotes, richly explained chapters, or added appendices.  The Western reader at the time could hardly question such an exposition, articulated with a breadth and force of which Burton proved so very capable.  This is what makes much of Personal Narrative disturbing, because the general reader will often get lost and lose sight of the fact that, regardless of the details, knowledgeable sounding style, etc., the account is still the subjective vision of a single man – wise though he may be – yet still a man no less, with prejudices all his own and limited, as all figures of history are, by a specific historical, cultural, and geographical background, the product of a specific time and place.  

Many did read the multi-volume work.  In fact, it proved an immediate success upon first publication in 1855 and established the author as a famous traveler and expert of the Orient.³⁸  Edward Said points out that, because Burton’s dominating voice and presence “encounters, and indeed merges with, the voice of Empire,” this composition, along with undoubtedly many others, helped lay the groundwork for future Western control and influence in the Near East, which was fast approaching.³⁹  This leads us to our final traveler and hajji who made the trip several times during the early 20th century.  His name is Harry St John Bridger Philby, who, in many ways, found his way into the Hijaz following the footsteps of Burton.

Numerous parallels exist between Philby and Burton.  Both were British civil servants and agents, each a linguistic master, and the two adventurers had that rare ability, according to Michael Wolfe, to move “with ease between the native and British worlds.”⁴⁰  Philby was sent in 1917 to meet the future king of Saudi Arabia as a representative of the British Government.⁴¹  This meeting is indicative of the changing political landscape of the time.  World War I was in full swing, many local Arab populations were beginning to rise up against longtime Ottoman administration and assert an independence-minded nationalistic sentiment, while the Ottomans became exceedingly bogged down in the bloody conflict.  For long before the story of Joseph Pitts recounted above, the nations of Europe had kept an envious eye on the region that became known as the Middle East, and never before – as with the approaching collapse of Ottoman authority – had a better opportunity than this presented itself to the West.

Philby’s voyages in Arabia.  From Wolfe, One Thousand Roads to Mecca, 566.

The man Philby met while representing the British crown was Ibn Sa’ud, the political and religious leader of the puritanical Islamic movement known as Wahhabism.  The Wahhabis had been in the process of consolidating the long-divided tribal factions of the Bedouin in the land east of the Hijaz, a region known as the Najd.⁴²  By this time, as Wolfe points out, “A quarter of a million Bedouin men, women, and children had moved from desert tents to several hundred mud-brick settlements.”⁴³  This unprecedented social transformation was taking place on the Arabian Peninsula while Sa’ud and his Wahhabi army were literally knocking on the door of the Muslim Holy Lands, which would fall shortly thereafter.  This was the socio-political reality Philby stepped into in 1917.  The relationship between him and Sa’ud would eventually blossom, with the British agent becoming a close and trusted adviser to the Saudi king as well as a convert to his version of Wahhabi Islam.

Philby in 1922.

Philby’s account of the Pilgrimage is unique for the above-mentioned facts.  “He performed the Hajj as a privileged resident,” writes Wolfe, “Traveling with the royal cavalcade, sometimes on camels, at other times by car.”⁴⁴  The British convert recounts the Hajj, one of subsequently many he would experience, in his book A Pilgrim in Arabia.  His narrative begins in April 1931 with his trip by car to Muna, the holy site east of Mecca.⁴⁵  Philby illustrates the king’s entourage when he writes, “No less than 300 motor vehicles composed the fleet destined to take the royal family to its destination – its women and slaves and children even down to the less than year old Talal, the baby of the King’s fifty-odd children.”⁴⁶  From this elucidation, the reader can readily see certain changes taking place on the Hajj.  At this time, apparently, only the royal household was permitted to trek during Hajj by car, but three years later, all who wanted to and could afford it were allowed the luxury.⁴⁷  After traveling by camel from Muna to Mount Arafat and back to Muna, Philby, accompanying the King’s brother, returned by car to Mecca, where he was able to enjoy the comforts of his own private residence.⁴⁸

Upon entering the Great Mosque in the holy city, the author tells about the Ka’ba in great detail, explaining the Kiswah, which is the covering of the sacred shrine made from black embroidered silk.  He had the opportunity of seeing the old Kiswa replaced and gives a description of the uncovered Bayt Allah, noting “massive square-cut blocks of unequal size bound together with a strong greyish mortar.”⁴⁹  Much of Philby’s narrative reads like the account of a detached witness rather than a converted believer and participant.  But a particularly telling moment occurs when he explains the situation of the surrounding area within the Mosque around the Ka’ba facing the Black Stone – from which every hajji must begin the tawaf – when he writes, “The scene round this, the most sacred spot in the Islamic world, was one of amazing commotion and confusion, which suggested to a European mind thoughts of traffic regulations, barriers and turnstiles.”⁵⁰  In this comparison, of which a man like Philby would be as qualified as any to make, the reader can sense an irony that flows from a person living between two worlds yet beginning to pull away from the earlier world of crowded spaces and over-organized existence – an existence structured, planned, rationalized.  The author immediately labels the idea of adding such “European” regulating devices to be untenable when it comes to the holy shrine because “it would go against the basic principles of Islam.”⁵¹  Philby sees this deepest of Muslim spiritual experiences as being incompatible with the “modern” amenities that Europe has to offer.

Philby’s text enters into a meditation on individualism in Islam.  According to him, the religion is very socially minded and democratic, but the one element that “makes the human ego all-important above the claims of society, race and even family” is in a “single-minded devotion to the Almighty.”⁵²  Philby comes to terms with the commotion and clamoring of the pilgrims because it plainly reflects, unfiltered by the trappings of everyday life, their everlasting devotion to Allah, and their humble and heartfelt attempt at personal salvation.  Here the former British agent shows, even if in a somewhat secular fashion, his attraction to Islam by its straightforward, no-strings-attached approach to the one path all religious traditions attempt to master: spiritual enlightenment.  In closing his account of the Hajj in Mecca, the author expresses his loyalty to the Wahhabi-administered government and its management of the Pilgrimage.  The reader must not forget that he was an important and integral part of this regime until his death.

In many ways, Philby can come to represent the final chapter in Britain’s pursuit to comprehend, participate in, and explain Mecca during the Hajj, the holiest center of Islamic life.  He was a man that gained a great deal of his initial education in and expertise of these places – which were off-limits to non-Muslims – in the Christian centers of Europe, following in the footsteps of all who passed before but eventually crossing over the once well-defined boundaries many of these previous travelers from the north sought to verify.  His crossing-over, finalized in his conversion to Wahhabi Islam, foreshadowed the decline of high imperialism and completed the exploration of the Hijaz.  After Philby, those who entered the Muslim holy lands were less the curious traveler or outsider and more, as Philby indicates, the true spiritual seeker, looking for personal salvation.  The Hijaz became, in a sense, a completed work in the pages of the Western will to define, order, and understand that which it sought to profit from.  Philby’s own maps of Arabia, compiled over the remainder of his life, filled in the “huge white blot” that Burton speaks about in the opening pages of his Personal Narrative.⁵³  As Michael Wolfe notes of Philby’s accomplishments, “None of the famous names associated with Arabian exploration … covered half so much territory.”⁵⁴

The common and apparent thread connecting Pitts, Burton, and Philby is not so much the specific circumstances of their travels, but it is, rather, the imperial presence beneath the surface of each narrative: that of Great Britain.  It is Britain that one discerns throughout all three accounts despite the fact that we might be examining but a small portion of a much greater whole.  With that in mind, we are somewhat justified in the following generalization: each hajji discussed above symbolizes, in various ways, the imperial progression of England –  at least in so far as its relation with Arabia is concerned.  Pitts, the first Englishman to experience the Hajj and write about it, was seized from a helpless trading vessel, powerless to forces he did not understand but, instead, had to learn from, feeding the expanding imperial desire for knowledge.  He is in many ways a young colonial power that has yet to establish its dominant status but must ramble down that painful course of life to gain the experience necessary to eventually master what once mastered it.  Burton, by far the most famous 19th-century British explorer to enter the Hijaz, signifies Great Britain at its imperial prime – voracious, eager, overly self-confident yet capable, just coming into greatness.  The England of Burton sees no limits to its appetites and wants to satisfy them all.  If Burton represents a Great Britain in the prime of life, Philby symbolizes the country at its imperial maturity – wiser and developed, having a significant pool of experience to draw from, a country with keen diplomatic expertise, which takes it into the most unwelcoming parts of the globe with ease.  But in Philby one might also discern the signs of decline, an empire outstretched, being swallowed by the land and people it originally set out to consume.  The stories of these three travelers serve as a narrative for exploration in a context displaying the dynamics of high imperialism, which sought with eager force to know the world that it wanted to rule and exploited that innate drive and urge for newness and knowledge in us all.

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1.  David Edwin Long, The Hajj Today: A Survey of the Contemporary Makkah Pilgrimage (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1979), 9.

2. Francis E. Peters, The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 40-48; Long, The Hajj Today, 3-5.

3. Ibid., 41.

4. Ibid., 27.

5. Ibid., 7.

6. Joseph Pitts, A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohammetans (London: University of London, 1903), 1-2.

2. Michael Wolfe, ed., One Thousand Roads to Mecca (New York: Grove Press, 1997), 104.

8. Ibid., 102.

9. Ibid., 105.

10. Pitts, A True and Faithful Account, 59-60.

11. Ibid., 81-82.

12. Ibid., 85.

13. The Ka’ba. Literally “the House of God.” In Michael Wolfe, One Thousand Roads to Mecca (New York: Grove Press, 1997), 575.

14. Ibid., 89.

15. Ibid., 89-90.

16. Michael Wolfe calls Arafat “the desert plain and mountain fifteen miles east of Mecca, where pilgrims perform the rite of standing (wukuf) during the high point of the Hajj.” In One Thousand Roads to Mecca (New York Grove Press, 1997), 571.

17. Ibid., 97.

18. Zahra Freeth and Victor Winstone, Explorers of Arabia: From the Renaissance to the End of the Victorian Era (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1978), 123.

19. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 196.

20. Wolfe, One Thousand Roads to Mecca, 192.

21. Sir Richard Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah Vol. 1, memorial edition (New York: Dover Publications, 1964), 45.

22. Ibid., 2.

23. Ibid., 5.

24. Michael Wolfe writes, “Burton’s great contribution to the pilgrim literature concerns Medina.” This is because the Swiss traveler John Lewis Burckhardt, who participated in the Hajj some forty years before Burton, wrote the “definitive” text of Mecca.  One Thousand Roads to Mecca, 199.

25. Sir Richard Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah Vol. 2, memorial edition (New York: Dover Publications, 1964), 50.

26. Ibid., 51.

27. Ibid.

28. Badawin is an alternative spelling for Bedouin.

29. Ibid., 76-123.

30. Freeth ad Winstone, Explorers of Arabia, 142.

31. Burton, Personal Narrative Vol. 2, 160-161.

32. Ibid., 161.

33. Ibid., 162-164.

34. Wolfe defines tawaf as “turning or circumambulation; a pilgrim rite comprising seven circuits of the Ka’ba.” One Thousand Roads to Mecca, 580. Burton’s description of tawaf is in Personal Narrative Vol. 2, 165-168.

35. Burton, Personal Narrative Vol. 2, 168-169.

36. Ibid., 276.

37. Wolfe, One Thousand Roads to Mecca, 199.

38. Ibid., 197.

39. Ibid., 195-196.

40. Ibid., 384.

41. Ibid., 385.

42. William Cleveland, A History of the Modern Middle East, 2nd edition (Boulder: Westview Press, 2000), 226.

43. Wolfe, One Thousand Roads to Mecca, 325.

44. Ibid., 384.

45. Harry St. John Bridger Philby, A Pilgrim in Arabia (London: Robert Hale Limited, 1946), 21.

46. Ibid., 22.

47. Ibid., 32.

48. Ibid., 34.

49. Ibid., 37.

50. Ibid., 37-38.

51. Ibid., 38.

52. Ibid., 38.

53. Burton, Personal Narrative Vol. 1, 1.

54. Wolfe, One Thousand Roads to Mecca, 385.

________________

Bibliography

Burton, Sir Richard Francis.  Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah, Vol. I and Vol. II.  Memorial Edition.  New York: Dover Publications, 1964.

Cleveland, William.  A History of the Modern Middle East, 2nd edition.  Boulder: Westview Press, 2000.

Freeth, Zahra and Victor Winstone.  Explorers of Arabia: From the Renaissance to the End of the Victorian Era.  New York: Holmes and Meier, 1978.

Long, David Edwin.  The Hajj Today: A Survey of the Contemporary Makkah Pilgrimage.  Albany: State University of New York Press, 1979.

Peters, Francis E.  The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Philby, Harry St. John Bridger.  A Pilgrim in Arabia.  London: Robert Hale Limited, 1946.

Pitts, Joseph.  A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohammetans.  London: University of London, 1903.

Said, Edward.  Orientalism.  New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

Wolfe, Michael, Ed.  One Thousand Roads to Mecca.  New York: Grove Press, 1997.

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Videos

Stephen K. Bannon

Yet, not only do we know very little about Steve Bannon as a person, and although he is at the forefront of potentially volatile and ascendant social forces, little is known about his vision for the future, which becomes an important question for the American people and the world in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election.

Some commentators are convinced the President-elect is Bannon’s puppet.  Prior to the election, billionaire Mark Cuban saw Trump’s rhetoric as part of a Bannon-inspired, cynical ploy to make money for Breitbart, a way to feed the lucrative social media outrage and hate machine, which to Cuban is Trump’s primary source of influence and power.  Whether that’s true is somewhat beside the point now that Trump will be President.  Their words and actions will no longer be confined to online echo chambers, as governing figures what they say and do will have real-world consequences for us all.

After being bestowed with his new presidential cabinet position appointment, Steve Bannon is suddenly a major topic of debate, rightfully so.  Many have been quick to label him a racist, a white supremacist, an anti-Semite, a politically-savvy conservative activist and propagandist.  Perhaps these are all true to some degree or another, and getting to the truth of these questions is essential if Bannon is to hold an important cabinet position.  However, particularly in light of the limited information available, I prefer to avoid moralistic pronouncements, which are more likely to stifle debate than further understanding.

Besides, with all the partisan claims and bad news floating around social media, it’s better to practice caution in the absence of sufficient evidence.  Luckily, a conservative friend of mine posted a Buzzfeed article on Facebook (where else?) titled “This Is How Steve Bannon Sees The Entire World.”  It’s a transcript of a 2014 Skype talk he gave at a conference on poverty hosted by the Human Dignity Institute at the Vatican.

Steve Bannon’s take on world history is interesting to say the least.  Being knowledgeable on the subject, I’d say he analyzes and interprets historical events in an overly-simplistic manner, devoid of nuance, blind to any context challenging his conclusions, which were likely arrived at prior to any reasoning on the subject.

In short, he’s an ideologue.  His primary Ideal is what he continuously refers to as the “Judeo-Christian West,” something according to his descriptions more mythological than actual, an identity marker and source of pride for the populist right, of which he is at the vanguard.  To Steve Bannon the forces of history are neatly categorized, unfolding in pre-determined stages, one giving way to the next, filed away under supernatural headings.  They are evidence of a mystical power, God’s hand.

Good vs. Evil.

As with all ideological moralizers, Steve Bannon is of course on the side of Good.  From that perch, anyone he disagrees with simply becomes a denier of historical truths if not an enemy of God.

His utopianism, as expressed in this talk, envisions not only God upon a heavenly throne but an “enlightened capitalism” sitting upon a very earthly one.  No doubt the righteous are certain to make lots of money and gain tremendous power within Bannon’s capitalist paradise.  As always, they will yield such power with care, compassion, and a view towards what is best.

Granted, his audience here is the Vatican.

Bannon is smart to criticize capitalism, to call it out and to recognize its state of crisis.  The Vatican, under different Popes, has long provided harsh critiques of capitalism, of its tendency to put a price on everything, how it creates poverty and extremes of wealth inequality, of its soul-crushing materialism.

Bannon distinguishes three forms of capitalism, two in detail, the other vaguely.  He marshals critiques of what he terms “state-sponsored” or “crony capitalism” and (atheistic) “Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism.”  Both are already rejected by most of his audience in the Vatican so I get the impression he’s pandering somewhat.  He then reveals his favored form of capitalism, “the ‘enlightened capitalism’ of the Judeo-Christian West.”

He never clearly defines or describes what he means by “enlightened capitalism.”  He comes close, constantly skirting around the answer, explaining it mostly by emotional buzzwords or by what it is not.

I think that you’re seeing three kinds of converging tendencies: One is a form of capitalism that is taken away from the underlying spiritual and moral foundations of Christianity and, really, Judeo-Christian belief.

I see that every day. I’m a very practical, pragmatic capitalist. I was trained at Goldman Sachs, I went to Harvard Business School, I was as hard-nosed a capitalist as you get. I specialized in media, in investing in media companies, and it’s a very, very tough environment. And you’ve had a fairly good track record. So I don’t want this to kinda sound namby-pamby, “Let’s all hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’ around capitalism.”

[….]

Now, with that, we are strong capitalists. And we believe in the benefits of capitalism. And, particularly, the harder-nosed the capitalism, the better.

[….]

General Electric and these major corporations that are in bed with the federal government are not what we’d consider free-enterprise capitalists. We’re backers of entrepreneurial capitalists. They’re not. They’re what we call corporatist. They want to have more and more monopolistic power and they’re doing that kind of convergence with big government. And so the fight here — and that’s why the media’s been very late to this party — but the fight you’re seeing is between entrepreneur capitalism . . . and the people like the corporatists that are closer to the people like we think in Beijing and Moscow than they are to the entrepreneurial capitalist spirit of the United States.

Bannon’s message, while failing to detail in a clear and positive manner the meaning of enlightened capitalism, is certainly rooted in Christian sectarianism and Western cultural supremacy, as evidenced by his references to the Judeo-Christian West.

One thing I want to make sure of, if you look at the leaders of capitalism at that time, when capitalism was I believe at its highest flower and spreading its benefits to most of mankind, almost all of those capitalists were strong believers in the Judeo-Christian West. They were either active participants in the Jewish faith, they were active participants in the Christians’ faith, and they took their beliefs, and the underpinnings of their beliefs was [sic] manifested in the work they did.

The clumsy wording (what does it mean to be a “strong believer in the Judeo-Christian West”?) betrays a vague idealism and vulgar determinism where complex historical forces and changes are simply understood as inevitable products of superior and inferior cultures.

Furthermore, Steve Bannon is an outright enemy of secularism, which he mystically, without detail, ties to Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism.

The other tendency is an immense secularization of the West. And I know we’ve talked about secularization for a long time, but if you look at younger people, especially millennials under 30, the overwhelming drive of popular culture is to absolutely secularize this rising iteration.

Now that call converges with something we have to face, and it’s a very unpleasant topic, but we are in an outright war against jihadist Islamic fascism. And this war is, I think, metastasizing far quicker than governments can handle it.

These strike me as highly ideological claims.  They ignore the fact that over the last 250+ years the Western intellectual tradition has moved to be more secular and scientifically-based, less religious and faith-based.  Cultural Jews in the West have long been at the forefront of the secularization of society, from Freud to Einstein, Mahler to Dylan.  Simply put, the more secular and science-based Western society became – including Jews, capitalists, Christians, Muslims, atheists, and everyone else – the greater the broader social benefits enjoyed.

Science, not faith or prayer, has led to longer lifespans and actual cures for once incurable diseases.  And it promises greater things on those fronts in the future.  Science feeds growing populations.  It brings electricity, the internet, video games, mass transit, the engines of capitalism.

Science, not the “Judeo-Christian” religion, is responsible.  When god ruled Europe, it was a hell-hole for the masses.  Disease, violence, war, and ignorance dominated daily life for thousands of years.  Just look at the most religious regions of the world today.  Repression.  Bigotry.  Sectarianism.  No thanks.  I’ll take the secular, science-believing (or at least science-leaning) countries – flawed as they may be – any day.

The greatest advances of world civilization, with actual positive benefits for humanity, have been the result of skeptical, scientific inquiry, not religious revelation.  The West had the Enlightenment, which began the long and difficult process of secularization, including the development of capitalism, that continues today.

Insofar as Steve Bannon wants to fight against the forces of secularization, he is an enemy of human progress, objectively so.

This caricature of Donald Trump was adapted by DonkeyHotey from a Creative Commons licensed image from Gage Skidmore’s Flickr photostream.

Furthermore, he is wrong in his assumptions.  Neither Judaism nor Christianity can take full credit, if any at all, for the advances of the West.  Scientific truths are true regardless of one’s religion or ethnicity.  Technological change, such as the invention of the printing press, was more obviously responsible.  Other civilizations could arrive at the same discoveries.  Understanding the scientific method does not require one to first be Judeo-Christian, white.

Bannon formulates most of his answers during the Q-and-A through this framework.  Most of what he despises he castigates as the seeds of crony capitalism.  From the Republican establishment and the 2008 financial crisis to the increasing racism present among the populist right in Europe and the United States, Bannon blames crony capitalism.¹  The bailouts were also a violation of Bannon’s enlightened capitalism.  He wants to make the bankers suffer for sure.²    He willingly fuels the anger through his media empire but offers little coherent vision beyond electoral victories and new media advertising dollars.

For any governing body, electoral victories or losses are only the beginning.  Vision matters.  And Steve Bannon’s vision is muddled, simplistic, and dangerously regressive.  More secularization is needed, not less.  More expert opinion.  More science.  Technological innovation.  Skepticism.  Progress.  To me, Bannon represents reactionary anger, emotional irrationalism, and regression.  His critique of capitalism might share some elements with some progressive critiques.  However, his prescriptions are either unclear and filled with buzzwords, or they are contrary to human progress.

1.  Bannon on the 2008 financial crisis: “The 2008 crisis, I think the financial crisis — which, by the way, I don’t think we’ve come through — is really driven I believe by the greed, much of it driven by the greed of the investment banks. My old firm, Goldman Sachs — traditionally the best banks are leveraged 8:1. When we had the financial crisis in 2008, the investment banks were leveraged 35:1. Those rules had specifically been changed by a guy named Hank Paulson.”

Here he is on the rise of racism: “One of the reasons that you can understand how they’re being fueled is that they’re not seeing the benefits of capitalism. I mean particularly — and I think it’s particularly more advanced in Europe than it is in the United States, but in the United States it’s getting pretty advanced — is that when you have this kind of crony capitalism, you have a different set of rules for the people that make the rules. It’s this partnership of big government and corporatists. I think it starts to fuel, particularly as you start to see negative job creation. If you go back, in fact, and look at the United States’ GDP, you look at a bunch of Europe. If you take out government spending, you know, we’ve had negative growth on a real basis for over a decade.”

2.  “Here’s how capitalism metastasized, is that all the burdens put on the working-class people who get none of the upside. All of the upside goes to the crony capitalists.  The bailouts were absolutely outrageous, and here’s why: It bailed out a group of shareholders and executives who were specifically accountable. The shareholders were accountable for one simple reason: They allowed this to go wrong without changing management. And the management team of this. And we know this now from congressional investigations, we know it from independent investigations, this is not some secret conspiracy. This is kind of in plain sight.”

Here’s a new song I produced for The Georgia Handshakers.  It’s written by my friend Mike Bynum.  He’s providing vocals and playing rhythm electric guitar.  All other instrumentation is me.

The song is about a horrible and infamous moment in Humboldt County history: the Indian Island Massacre of 1860.  Here’s how Joan Crandell describes the event:

In the pre-dawn hours of February 26, 1860 a small group of white men, using axes and knives, massacred over 50 women and children of Tuluwat, the Wiyot village that had existed on Indian Island (Gunther Island) for over one thousand years. Concurrent attacks took place at other Wiyot settlements around the bay, resulting in the death of over 150 people, mainly women and children.  Bret Harte, serving as editor of the local paper in his employer’s absence, wrote a scathing editorial decrying the massacre.  His resulting expulsion from Humboldt County within the month was reported to be in response to threats from civilians who supported the murderers. A number of editorials that followed denounced the crime and hinted at guilty men, but refused to name them outright, perhaps for fear of retribution.  A grand jury was called in April 1860 to investigate the matter but no one was named and the crime went unpunished.

Everything was produced on Kxstudio, a Linux audio production distribution.  I used Ardour as my workstation, Calf creative suite plugins, and the fantastic epicVerb VST plugin from Variety of Sound.  For drum programming I used Hydrogen Drum Machine.

Please excuse the mix quality.  I don’t have even the most basic setup for home monitoring and mixing.  I mix using a pair of cheap Sony headphones.  It’s a bit of trial-and-error; I tweak a few things, finalize everything, then check it on my Cowon J3 and in my car.  Then repeat.

Listen & Download:

Related articles

• The Wiyot of Eel River
• Humboldt and Harte
• The Healing of the World

This is the film Mad River: Hard Times in Humboldt County by Mark Freeman, Claire Schoen and Jack Wilson about the early-1980s timber industry in Northern California and the growing conflict with environmentalists.

Mad River: Hard Times in Humboldt County is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

English: Landscape with St John the Evangelist at Patmos (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here’s a brief synopsis of my take on the historiography  of authorial intent:

It’s essential for the historian to understand and analyse the intent of any author, yet always within the broader historical frame of reference. However, I’m also aware it’s impossible to know completely the context and intent of any ancient text. We have enough problems grappling with contemporary world events as they happen, with cameras rolling. So absolute familiarity is off the table.

Certainly the task is to come as close as possible in our interpretations, but we must be humble and acknowledge our limits, accepting the past as a forever-partial reconstruction.

But the blur of history has been brought into better focus through new techniques of analysis. For example, as more data — some new, some old yet unexamined — from the past are investigated over time, the historian’s tools from which to work and test ideas expand.

Using textual analysis we can recognize common definable forms. These forms might be sayings, epics, prophesies, histories, etc. Most biblical scholars have long-taken Revelation of John to be an example of a common and widespread literary form.

Here’s how scholar Robert M. Price describes this canonical Christian prophetic work:

There are many such ancient and medieval books, mostly in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, though they are not altogether absent from other religions. John’s book lent its name to the collective genre; hence, all are called ‘apocalypses‘ even though John’s was by no means the first. (The Pre-Nicene New Testament, 747)

Using this as a starting point to look at Revelation, we gain a greater insight into how and why the book was written. Notice how this interpretation doesn’t rely on the original intent of the author. John of Patmos was almost certainly intending this for an ancient audience, using symbolism obviously referencing ancient Rome.

From John’s perspective he intended the writing for his own, long-dead contemporaries, not an audience thousands of years into the future. We understand this better because we can locate his work (Revelation) within a broader literary context (apocalyptic form).  The scholar utilizing form criticism here

So form criticism in this case gives us the added bonus of not only knowing the author’s intent, but also nestling it within a greater context of ancient history.

That being said, always strive for humility when arriving at such historical conclusions, and always be prepared to change if better evidence is presented.

Related articles

• Real Historians Do Bayes!
• Patmos, Island of the Apocalypse
• Several Examples of How Biblical Authors Stole Literary Ideas from Ancient Pagans

Here are a couple of videos I’ve put together for the band I’m in The Georgia Handshakers.  We recorded the first track on 21 June 2013.  It’s a live performance of an instrumental I wrote titled “Figs From Thorns.”

Lineup:

Brian Barfield (Bass)
Mike Bynum (Rhythm Guitar)
Jeff Morgan (Lead Guitar)
John Newmer (Percussion)
Rob Robinson (Drums)

Video used: Flip The Frog – Fiddlesticks (1930)
http://archive.org/details/FLIP_FROG-FIDDLESTICKS
Video is in the public domain.

“Spain” was recorded the next day (22 June 2013) at Redwood Curtain Brewing Company.  Same lineup.

“Spain” written by Chick Corea.
Video from The Great Train Robbery (1903)
http://archive.org/details/TheGreatTrainRobbery_555
Video is in the public domain.

I first came across this (in)famous murder ballad only very recently while perusing my copy of The Real Bluegrass Book published by Hal Leonard.  Both sides of my family come from east Tennessee.  I was born there and spent large portions of my childhood exploring the region’s beauty nestled up to the Smoky Mountains.  My time there included regular trips to the big city, Knoxville.

So the title jumped off the page.

My version of the murderous traditional includes four verses only, leaving out the passages where the narrator’s mother confronts him.  The reason simply being these were the lyrics in my songbook.  I could easily have included the other passages, but that only crossed my mind after the recording was finished.

I recorded Knoxville Girl using a Behringer Xenyx Q802USB as my mixer/audio interface.  I used a Shure SM58 for vocals and an SM57 for the guitar, which also plugged directly in the mixer via a piezo pickup (recorded in parallel using the separate left/right channels). The digital signal goes into my trusty System76 PanP7.

For software I start with the excellent audio/video production-focused Linux distribution Kxstudio.  From there Ardour 3 is my DAW of choice.  For plugins (vocal EQ and guitar reverb) I took advantage of Calf Studio Gear’s fantastic creative suite.  Finally, on the vocals I was able to use the epicVerb vst plugin created by Variety of Sound.  Though the plugin is designed for Windows I had little trouble using it with Kxstudio (however I’m unable to use it in live monitoring situations without a few xruns).

Anyway, that’s that.  For anyone interested in finding out more about the background story of Knoxville Girl I highly recommend Paul Slade’s detailed essay on the subject, “Unprepared to die: Knoxville Girl.”